Hello again! Here we will have the review for the mare counterpart to the fjord horse pairing. If you would like to read more about the breed itself, I included a history and variety of facts for them in the Schleich’s gelding article here. The figure being discussed below is the mare figure by Schleich produced in 2024, #13980.
Fjord Gelding (Horse Club by Schleich)
5 (6 votes)
Howdy folks! I have another horse review, huge thanks to Happy Hen Toys and their enormous generosity to provide a sample of this pair of horses. A rather rare breed in toy form, these two were welcome to my herd and are quite an improvement over the previous generation.
Silky Shark (Wild Safari Sealife by Safari Ltd.)
4.6 (12 votes)
The silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis) is a species of requiem shark found in tropical and subtropical seas around the world. They inhabit the epipelagic zone near continental shelves and deepwater reefs where they feed on bony fishes, cephalopods, and the occasional crustacean. They are known to be active and inquisitive and are considered potentially dangerous to humans but given their preferred habitat, encounters are rare.
Brown Dog Tick (Merial)
4 (4 votes)
Commonly called the brown dog tick or kennel tick, Rhipicephalus sanguineus is the most widely distributed tick species in the world. It’s primary hosts are dogs and other canids, but it can bite humans as well. However, it doesn’t have a strong predilection for humans, and even in households where dogs are infested, their human owners may never get bitten.
Rabbit Figurines Playset (Toymany)
5 (4 votes)
Before I start this review, I must once again thank @Toymany-kenc and all our friends at Toymany for the donation of these review samples for the Blog. I had a keen interest in purchasing this set, so I was very happy to be able to get one for review!
The domestic rabbit is descended from the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).
Tabby Cat, Orange (Safari Farm Collection by Safari Ltd.)
4.1 (8 votes)
Being December we’re now at the height of the holiday season and so for my next couple of reviews I’ll be featuring seasonally appropriate animals. “But this is a cat”, I hear you say, “what do cats have to do with the Holidays?” Well, if you’re asking that question then you’ve apparently never heard of the Yule cat, my favorite piece of Christmas folklore.
Bottlenose Dolphin (AAA)
3.9 (10 votes)
Majestic, intelligent, enigmatic, beautiful, elegant. These are all apt adjectives that describe the common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), one of the most popular, wide ranging, and recognizable cetaceans in the world. Toy Animal Wiki catalogs 71 different figures of the species but there are easily many more than that.
Shortfin Mako Shark, 2017 (Wild Safari Sealife by Safari Ltd.)
4.3 (10 votes)
Shark Week may be over but after posting two back-to-back sharks I wanted to keep this ball rolling for at least a couple more reviews. Plus, it’s Shark Week as I write this, so I’m still feeling sharky. Today we’re looking at the 2017 shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) by Safari Ltd.
Goblin Shark (Sealife by CollectA)
4.9 (14 votes)
In 1889 fossils of an unusual Mesozoic shark were described. It was named Scapanorhynchus, Greek for “shovel-snout” due to the elongated blade-like snout that jutted out over its face. Nine years later an unusual 42” (107 cm) immature male shark with similar anatomy was caught in Sagami Bay, Japan and formally described as Mitsukurina owstoni, commonly known as the goblin shark in English and the tenguzami in Japanese.
Gulper Eel (Creatures of the Deep Collection by Safari Ltd.)
4.3 (15 votes)
Thanks to its wide, loosely hinged mouth that makes up about a quarter of its total body length, the gulper eel (Eurypharynx pelecanoides) has become a poster child for the deep sea and the bizarre creatures that live there. No surprise then that Safari Ltd. included it in their Creatures of the Deep collection back in 1998.
Barn Owl (Wildlife by CollectA)
4 (10 votes)
The barn owl (Tyto alba) is one of the most widely distributed birds in the world, and the most widely distributed owl species, living on every continent except Antarctica. As such, it features prominently in many different myths and legends around the world. Going by ominous names such as ghost owl, death owl, and demon owl you can get an idea of how the barn owl typically figures into local beliefs, making it the perfect animal to review this Halloween season.
Minke Whale (Wild Safari Sealife by Safari Ltd.)
4.4 (5 votes)
The minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) belongs to the same genus as the world’s largest animal, the blue whale, but at 26-33’ (8-10.2 meters) is only a fraction of its giant cousin’s size. Indeed, the minke whale is the world’s smallest species of rorqual and the second smallest species of baleen whale (the pygmy right whale is the smallest).
Blainville’s Beaked Whale (Sealife by CollectA)
4.7 (7 votes)
The beaked whales of the family Ziphiidae are collectively among the most elusive and poorly understood of all cetaceans, or mammals in general. Roughly 24 species have been described so far with the Ramari’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon eueu) having been described in 2021. Indeed, new beaked whale species are regularly described, or their taxonomy revised, as our understanding of them increases.
Giant Squid (Monterey Bay Aquarium Collection by Safari Ltd.)
5 (6 votes)
I must have been about 7-9 years old when I was first introduced to the giant squid (Architeuthis dux) via an episode of Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, which aired on the Discovery Channel during the 80’s and 90’s. The show was about unexplained phenomena and the episode in question was titled “Monsters of the Deep”.
Basking Shark (Sealife by CollectA)
4.9 (9 votes)
Jaws author Peter Benchley once stated in an interview that “every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs”. In my case it was both, and really the natural world in general, but sharks and dinosaurs took special interest. So, it made sense that a few years after launching my dinosaur collecting career, I would dip my toes into extant animals and start collecting sharks.